


Un Américain bien tranquille

by lunicole



Series: Le Code de l'indigénat [3]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Colonialism, First Indochina War, French Indochina, Gen, Post-Colonial, Vietnam War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-14
Updated: 2015-04-14
Packaged: 2018-03-22 21:58:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3744904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunicole/pseuds/lunicole
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The scent of cilantro and coriander is a delicate one, just as the perfume France used to bring to his darling little Cochinchina back when she would behave, if only for a moment. Those times are dead, more dead than the men who fought in Diên Biên Phu and got crushed by the sheer willpower of what France still has a hard time seeing as anything more than a guerrilla of savage annamites. They're more dead than the man they've just seen being executed, and they're more dead than France's empire, now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Un Américain bien tranquille

**Author's Note:**

> For the Anon meme 20-minutes challenge

_Saigon, 1954_  
  
America looks ill. He's staring at the steaming bowl of beef broth with a pale face and eyes that seem unfocused, and the show of it all makes France frown. It shouldn't be like this. France knows for a thing that he didn't intend for things to be like this just now. He can only close his eyes, briefly, juggling with chopsticks with practiced ease whereas America only awkwardly managed to slurp noodles with a fork between bouts of speaking with a grave tone, about the future of Europe, of Asia, of Korea, of China, and of Vietnam.  
  
The scent of cilantro and coriander is a delicate one, just as the perfume France used to bring to his darling little Cochinchina back when she would behave, if only for a moment. Those times are dead, more dead than the men who fought in  _Diên Biên Phu_  and got crushed by the sheer willpower of what France still has a hard time seeing as anything more than a guerrilla of savage annamites. They're more dead than the man they've just seen being executed, and they're more dead than France's empire, now.  
  
The thought of it makes France's head ache. There are still matters to take care of in Algeria. He can feel in his gut that this new war will be just as costly and just as much of a waste than those nine years of mud and dirt and rain in the jungle.  
  
"Has the execution made you lose your appetite?" France asks idly, but there's a hint of spite to his voice.  
"I..."  
  
America sighs, and France doesn't even have to listen to his answer to know what it's going to sound like. He cringes at the self-serving tone, and wide-eyed morality that makes America so, so, so different of the usual old men of Europe France has grown used to deal with. It's almost like dealing with Germany, in a way, and the resemblance makes France's jaw tighten.  
  
"Yes. I... I didn't expect this."  
  
America is an idiot for not expecting anything different from this here, in that tropical hellhole France tried to tame into his possession. The truth is harsher than the sprays of blood of the death machine, and it's going to eat America alive if he insists on making the same mistakes France made. Vietnam isn't tamable the way Philippines is, and whatever are the reasons pushing America to go through his plans in Indochina, they're most probably the wrong ones.  
  
"I'm sorry the guillotine isn't exactly a tourist attraction, but it seemed to me like something you needed to see for yourself here."  
  
America looks at him, frowns slightly. France can see that he doesn't get it, and it shouldn't make him feel good, in that resentful, bone-gnawing way, to know that America will probably fall face first into a nest full of delicate tropical spiders and lies and hate from the monster France himself created. There are bits of him in Vietnam's ways, now, in the way she turns words into weapons, and silent rage into war. He's not sure if he's to be mad or proud of that very fact just yet.  
  
The  _phở_  tastes good, and so does the opium Vietnam used to serve him, what seems like a lifetime ago, supple body and warm skin. As they eat in that dingy little place in the heart of the colonial city, France wonders, very briefly, if the girl will try to kill America in his sleep with the same passion she tried countless times with him. He can't know, but only hope.


End file.
